Abstract

As the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) continues to rise (Zerfass, Verhoeven, Tench, Moreno, & Verčič, 2011; Zerfass, Tench, Verhoeven, Verčič, & Moreno, 2010), several studies have been conducted investigating the effects that CSR may have on organisations (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Turker, 2008; Verboven, 2011). The mainstream of the CSR research has focused so far on examining the consumers’ attitudes and behavioural intentions towards an organisation’s CSR investment (Creyer & Ross, 1997; Maignan, 2001). Research outcomes indicate that stakeholders expect organisations to behave in an ethical manner (Schlegelmilch, 1997) and show concern for social issues (Shaw & Shiu, 2003). Even though organisations have expanded and enriched their CSR agenda over the years (Kotler & Lee, 2005) and do not solely focus on environmental concerns anymore, as this may have been the case in the late 1980s and early 1990s (L’Etang, 1994), it is debatable whether an organisation will eventually be rewarded (Laczniak & Murphy, 1993) or not (Carrigan & Attala, 2001) for undertaking CSR initiatives. This study explores the effect of CSR on employees as this is an understudied stakeholder group (Aguilera, Rupp, Williams & Ganapathi, 2007; Dhanesh, 2012a). More specifically, as CSR means “different things to different people” (Jones, Bowd & Tench, 2009, p. 303), this study will explore the significance of scepticism as a personality trait upon CSR initiatives and will focus on the effects it may have upon word-of-mouth (WOM) and the development of employee-organisation relationships. Moreover this study will also examine the outcome of the individual’s involvement with the domain of the CSR investment upon the cultivation of word-of-mouth (WOM) and the employee-organisation relationship.

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